Believing the worst about America regardless of the evidence

The editors of the Wall Street Journal explain that, given the outcome of the various trials and investigations of the abuses at Abu Ghraib, one of two things is true. Either the story was over-hyped last year or our government — the Bush administration, the U.S. military, and independent investigators such as former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger — has perpetrated a massive cover-up.
The Journal thinks it’s a case of the former — an overhyped story, in an election year, with the goal of “stripping the Iraq War of moral authority and turning President Bush into another LBJ.” Ted Kennedy, among others, apparently thinks it’s the latter — a perfidious refusal to punish the guilty. But, given the outcome of the many inquiries and legal proceedings on the matter and the evidence presented therein, the burden should rest with Kennedy and his fellow leftists to substantiate their claims of whitewash. Until they do, we should assume that these claims are asserted a priori, based on a combination of desire for political gain and raw contempt for the military and for our government in general.